Jacquie Robertson

In working with clients, the most common diagnosis people came to me with was social anxiety disorder. They felt anxious around new people, completely pre-occ...upied around what they said or how others were perceiving them. They described feeling awkward in their own skin + many coped with these feelings by drinking. Drinking that sometimes became an issue because they felt like they couldn’t control it or often drank way more than they had planned. Social anxiety is misunderstood. It’s not a disorder, it’s a nervous system response. When the nervous system is in a hyper vigilant state, our body feels as though there is a threat in our environment. Objectively, a threat to our safety isn’t there (we are simply in a room of new people) but the body sends feedback to the mind which then creates cyclical thoughts of not being liked, that we are being judged, or false beliefs of low self worth. Our trauma brain is back in our past. Where we learned hypervigilance to keep us safe in our earliest environments. Binge drinking or coping with alcohol is actually a very common attempt to regulate the nervous system. It’s why so many feel they just need to grab a drink before even engaging with people. Ways to Heal: 1. Mind body movement: yoga, Thai chi, kickboxing. 2. EFT (tapping): I have a video on how to on my YouTube channel 3. Meditation: with committed practice, meditation has been scientifically proven to expand grey matter of the brain within the pre-frontal cortex. Expanding this area of the brain allows for quicker problem solving + wider range of emotional regulation 4. Grounding techniques: using sight, sound, smell to ground into the present moment. With practice, the body + mind re-learn safety/security + can recover from hypervigilance more quickly #selfhealers

Women need Sisters... We have a few spaces open in our online Wednesday night women's group. If you're looking for connection, community and healing, join us...... https://www.jacquierobertson.com/sacredsisterhood

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. Thich Nhat Hanh #wellness #quotes #kindness #gratitude #traumahealing #res...iliency #therapists #ptsd #somaticexperiencing #somatic #somatichealing #therapy #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealth #healing #inclusion #diversity #equity #anxiety #trauma #love #cptsd See more

All Feelings Welcome Today On this National Day of Mourning for the Indigenous people who protest a holiday glorifying their trauma, most Americans still gather... to give thanks. The New York Times asked Americans to write a 6 word memoir to encapsulate how they're feeling in 2020- and where they find glimpses of gratitude. Thousands contributed to make this collective poem, which made me a bit weepy with the tenderness of it all. The crinkling eye above the mask. A furtive hug with a friend. The backyard haircuts are getting better. My choir still meets on Zoom. Friends who give me streaming passwords. Family reunion in January, before Covid. Miss family, but safer for them. Saved a lot of lipstick money. More homemade pasta, no more jeans. No shame in elastic-waist pants. Braless at home? No one cares. Mom, 87, rocking pretty, pandemic ponytail. Teenage son still likes to snuggle. My parents live two blocks away. No better excuse to avoid in-laws. This stinking year is nearly over. * Sunny mornings, a window facing east. My bicycle, the trail, each morning. Windows have never been so important. Toscanini’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 5329 games of solitaire, won 5286. Throwing the football with my sons. Jonesy got a hole in one. Still ridin’ my horse at seventy. Postcards crossing the country real mail. Living in the Green Mountain State. So grateful to live in Canada. Left US for science-believing Germany. I am thankful for Pastor Bob. I’m just thankful for indoor plumbing. I am thankful to be thankful. Never been social; now I’m good. I am bored, but not dead. * Ambulance took him. He came home. Hearing granny laugh on the phone. It’s just a cold, not Covid. My parents did not get it. Reached age 92, grandson reached 3. I held my dying husband’s hand. Held my son as he died. Our kids, after my wife died. My wife gave me her kidney. Lung cancer team at Sloan Kettering. Got sober during 2020, stayed sober. Wasn’t too late to say sorry. Wildfires took much but we survived. Faith, family, friends, dedicated medical professionals. Dr. Fauci and all truth-speakers. Volunteers who take experimental vaccines. Healthcare workers. Healthcare workers. Healthcare workers. * Pandemic baby after years of trying. At twelve weeks, size of lime. Special-needs child, graduated feeding tube. My toddler and my weed guy. Toddler sees Audrey Hepburn, says Mama! I watched her learn to read. Water cooler chats with six-year-old son. Thankful for learning, in my pajamas. Teachers’ patience. Reminder: no fart machines. I teach funny, resilient 8th graders. High school, even in a pandemic. Survived first semester of online university. Six years later, wife completes PhD. Out of prison with great job. Rediscovering myself by reading the Bible. Stole my car, not my books. Tried. Failed. Failed worse. Kept going. * To be a United States citizen. Americans waited in line to vote. Thanks for voting, Americans. Immigrant scientist. Gritty becoming an icon for democracy. Once again, my Black vote matters. God, family, freedom, Trump, health, USA. Trump is our best president ever. Vaccines are coming. Thank you, Trump. Vaccine is coming, Trump is going. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter. Biden won the election thank God. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. Paris Climate Agreement returns in January. The first female Vice President, baby. The women who came before me. Democracy triumphed. Now pass the stuffing. * Aunt’s Jell-O salad not gonna happen. Solitary Thanksgiving means no turkey. LOBSTER. Alone, spouses thankful for tiny turkey. Daughter lovingly uninviting me for Thanksgiving. Zoom Thanksgiving beats an ICU Christmas. Thankful for sweet potato pie, y’all. Red or white, and occasionally rosé. The many people who deliver food. My restaurant colleagues, who never quit. 248 cocktail hours with my mom. Empty calendar means frequent dinners together. There’s really more kindness than hate. * We’re falling in love over FaceTime. Fell in love six feet apart. I have someone I can hug. Even after I cheated, she stayed. The freedom of filing for divorce. Lost job. Lost boyfriend. Found happiness. I might marry Coronavirus Boy Toy. Gayer than ever, very in love. Postponed wedding, having a baby instead. Fell in love at age 75. I proposed and she said yes. Will you marry me, Taylor Hollenkamp? As we count our blessings and remember our losses, may we also honor and acknowledge the losses of the Native Americans upon whose genocides and land theft this holiday is built. Let's read the real stories of what happened to our children so we can undo the fictions we were taught in grade school and move towards reparations. Maybe one day we'll move our day of thanks and family to another month so as not to rub salt in this raw wound. But for today, may you and your loved ones feel whatever it is you feel. All feelings welcome. What’s your 6 word memoir for 2020?

**12/22/2020 update** Many wrote to share the author with me- THANK YOU! Kate Scott wrote this beautiful piece. Read her original post on Quora: https://www.q...uora.com/Has-a-therapist-ever-t//Kate-Scott-6 Kate, you're a gifted writer! Let me know if you prefer I remove my post. (Sorry for delay - all your messages loaded into my 'other' folder in Messenger. Just now found them!) RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE. "When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by. I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say. What are you struggling with? he asked. I gestured around me and said I dunno man. Life. Not satisfied with my answer, he said No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you? I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to have something more substantial. Something more profound. But I didn’t. So I told him, "Honestly? The dishes. It's stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes. I felt like an idiot even saying it. What kind of grown-ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with *actual* problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes? But, my therapist nodded in understanding and then said: RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE. I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me. Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules. It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express. That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times. I felt like I had conquered a dragon. The next day, I took a shower lying down. A few days later, I folded my laundry and put it wherever the fuck they fit. There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again. Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry. But, at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson: THERE ARE NO RULES. RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!" Author: Kate Scott - original post link here: https://www.quora.com/Has-a-therapist-ever-t//Kate-Scott-6 #pandemic2020 #depressionawareness